My Top 10 Book Covers of 2011!

Top 10 Book Covers of 2011

So it is time for me to post my favorite book covers of 2011. Last year I did 20 so I can't even begin to tell you how difficult it was for me to just pick 10. As a matter of fact, of all the posts for this event, this one has been the hardest. But here they are folks, in no particular order:

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Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Publisher: Razorbill
Pub. Date: January 11th, 2011
Series: Across the Universe, #1

Why I Love this Cover:
This cover is out of this frikin world with its amazingness. (Aren't we feeling punny today.) I love that you only get the silhouette/outline of the main characters so that there is plenty left to the imagination while still really contributing to the composition of the cover. And the galaxy/stars combined with the choice of colors just make this image go POW! Everything about this cover is spectacular!

Synopsis via Goodreads
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone - one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship - tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now, Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

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Hereafter by Tara Hudson
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pub. Date: June 7th, 2011
Series: Hereafter, #1

Why I Love this Cover:
What is not to love about this cover? The blue and green tones are gorgeous and I love that the girl is transparent, which considering this is a ghost story, makes sense. The font, colors, image and composition truly make this cover breathtakingly beautiful!

Synopsis via Goodreads
Can there truly be love after death?

Drifting in the dark waters of a mysterious river, the only thing Amelia knows for sure is that she's dead. With no recollection of her past life—or her actual death—she's trapped alone in a nightmarish existence. All of this changes when she tries to rescue a boy, Joshua, from drowning in her river. As a ghost, she can do nothing but will him to live. Yet in an unforgettable moment of connection, she helps him survive.

Amelia and Joshua grow ever closer as they begin to uncover the strange circumstances of her death and the secrets of the dark river that held her captive for so long. But even while they struggle to keep their bond hidden from the living world, a frightening spirit named Eli is doing everything in his power to destroy their newfound happiness and drag Amelia back into the ghost world . . . forever.

Thrilling and evocative, with moments of pure pleasure, Hereafter is a sensation you won't want to miss.

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Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Pub. Date: March 22nd, 2011
Trilogy: The Chemical Garden, #1
My Review

Why I Love this Cover:
Okay so I really liked this cover when I first saw it but it is one of those that I slowly grew to love even more as time passed and I read the book. The cover and story go perfectly together.Despite having another pretty girl in a dress on it, there are a lot of things about this cover that really make it shine for me. First off, loving the teased hair and roughly cut dress as they add a bit of edginess to the cover. The caged bird is so symbolic and really gives this cover that extra originality factor. The tones are beautiful and I wouldn't have thought it but the pink lines, squares, and circles work really well making this cover even more noticeable and eye-catching.

Synopsis via Goodreads
What if you knew exactly when you would die?

Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant she trusts, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limited time she has left.

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The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Pub. Date: September 29th, 2011
Series: Shades of London, #1

Why I Love this Cover:
I love the overlay of images with this cover and feel they really give this book something to make it stand out and draw one's eye in to the deepest depths of the cover. The shades of gray and black, with only a little accent color here and there, help this because otherwise, if the images had too much color, the cover would have looked really busy and been a bit much. I love the slight old timey feel and this is one of those covers that has had me WOW-ed from the first time I saw it.

Synopsis via Goodreads
The day Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London marks a memorable occasion. For Rory, it's the start of a new life at a London boarding school. But for many, this will be remembered as the day a series of brutal murders broke out across the city, gruesome crimes mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper events of more than a century ago.
Soon "Rippermania" takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. Rory spotted the man police believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him. Even her roommate, who was walking with her at the time, didn't notice the mysterious man. So why can only Rory see him? And more urgently, why has Rory become his next target? In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of suspense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of London and discover her own shocking abilities.

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Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen
Pub. Date: August 30th, 2011
Series: Anna, #1
My Review

Why I Love this Cover:
This cover is just bad ass and creepy and awesome. I love how the cover is almost completely monochromatic with just a few red accents to symbolize the 'blood' in 'Anna Dressed in Blood'. I love the haunted old house in the background and the fact that Anna is on the cover. It all really does a magnificent job of setting up the atmosphere and setting in your head before you even start the book. And as someone who has read it, the cover really does fit perfectly.

Synopsis via Goodreads
Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . .

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, but now stained red and dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.

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Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Pub. Date: February 15th, 2011
Series: Angelfire, #1

Why I Love this Cover:
Okay so this is another bad ass cover. Seriously, this cover just kicks butt. I also love how the majority of the cover is fairly monochromatic with whites, greys, and blacks but then there are the small pops of orangish-red in Ellie's hair and the font. (I'm sensing a theme here.) Also, the birds add a nice little creepy touch to round it all off.

Synopsis via Goodreads
First there are nightmares.
Every night Ellie is haunted by terrifying dreams of monstrous creatures that are hunting her, killing her.

Then come the memories.
When Ellie meets Will, she feels on the verge of remembering something just beyond her grasp. His attention is intense and romantic, and Ellie feels like her soul has known him for centuries. On her seventeenth birthday, on a dark street at midnight, Will awakens Ellie's power, and she knows that she can fight the creatures that stalk her in the grim darkness. Only Will holds the key to Ellie's memories, whole lifetimes of them, and when she looks at him, she can no longer pretend anything was just a dream.

Now she must hunt.
Ellie has power that no one can match, and her role is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls. But in order to survive the dangerous and ancient battle of the angels and the Fallen, she must also hunt for the secrets of her past lives and truths that may be too frightening to remember.

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Ingenue by Jillian Larkin
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Pub. Date: August 9th, 2011
Series: Flappers, #2

Why I Love this Cover:
One word folks. Classy! I love book covers for books from the 20's through 40's. Maybe it's because I feel like I should have been born in that era sometimes, instead of this one, but they really draw me in. I've been dying to read this series.

Synopsis via Goodreads
Power . . . love . . . scandal . . .
There’s never enough to go around.

In the city that never sleeps, Lorraine Dyer is wide awake. Ever since she exposed Clara Knowles for the tramp she was—and lost her closest confidante in the process—Lorraine has spent every second scheming to make her selfish, lovesick ex–best friend pay for what she did. No one crosses Lorraine. Not even Gloria.

True love conquers everything—or so Gloria Carmody crazily believed. She and Jerome Johnson can barely scrape together cash for their rent, let alone have a moment to whisper sweet nothings in the dark. And if they thought escaping Chicago meant they’d get away with murder . . . they were dead wrong.

Clara was sure that once handsome, charming Marcus Eastman discovered her shameful secret, he’d drop her like a bad habit. Instead, he swept her off her feet and whisked her away to New York. Being with Marcus is a breath of fresh air—and a chance for Clara to leave her wild flapper ways firmly in the past. Except the dazzling parties and bright lights won’t stop whispering her name. . . .

INGENUE is the second novel in the sexy, dangerous, and ridiculously romantic Flappers series set in the Roaring Twenties . . . where revenge is a dish best served cold.

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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Publisher: Philomel Books
Pub. Date: March 22nd, 2011

Why I Love this Cover:
This cover is so simplistic, refreshing, symbolic and unique. I love everything about it and while I still need to read the book, I get the feeling that this cover fits the story perfectly, just based on the synopsis and what I've heard about it.

Synopsis via Goodreads
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously - and at great risk - documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

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The Lucky Kind by Alyssa B. Sheinmel
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Pub. Date: May 10th, 2011

Why I Love this Cover:
I am so jealous of whoever took the photo for this cover. Seriously, almost the entire cover is a reflection in a big puddle of rain water and yet there is something so stunning, yet rough, about it that I just love. I also like how real the cover feels.

Synopsis via Goodreads
High school junior Nick Brandt is intent on getting a girlfriend, and Eden Reiss is the one that he wants. He has exactly four semesters to get the girl, but when the phone rings on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday night, life for Nick and his parents will never be the same. What had been a seemingly idyllic home life has become something else entirely. But with this shake-up comes a newfound confidence for Nick; he's become a bolder version of himself, no longer afraid to question his parents, and no longer afraid to talk to Eden.

Alyssa B. Sheinmel has written a powerfully gripping story about family secrets, falling in love, and finding luck in unexpected--and sometimes unwelcome—circumstances.

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In the Shadow of the Lamp by Susanne Dunlap
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
Pub. Date: April 12th, 2011
My Review

Why I Love this Cover:
On its own, while I do love this cover, it probably wouldn't have made my Top 10. However, after having read this book, the cover fits it so perfectly that I had to include it. I like that you can't see the girl's face and the lamp adds the perfect touch. Overall great composition and lovely font.

Synopsis via Goodreads
It's 1854 and sixteen-year-old Molly would give anything to change her circumstances as a lowly servant in a posh London house. So when she hears of an opportunity to join the nurses who will be traveling with Florence Nightingale to the Crimea, she jumps at the chance. The work is grueling, the hospital conditions deplorable, and Miss Nightingale a demanding teacher. Before long, the plight of British soldiers becomes more than just a mission of mercy as Molly finds that she's falling in love with both a dashing young doctor and a soldier who has joined the army to be near her. But with the battle raging ever nearer, can Molly keep the two men she cares for from harm? A love story to savor, and a fascinating behind-the-scenes imagining of the woman who became known as 'the lady with the lamp.'

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So what did you think? I'm going to be totally honest, I plan to cheat. You know how I told you how hard it was for me to choose? Well I decided to make it a little easier on myself for the sake of my sanity. Later today I'm going to post my Top 10 Indie Book Covers of 2011. Yep, that's right. I feel like it's okay to do two posts because they deserve to both be adequately and equally acknowledged with seperate posts. And besides, I think it means so much more when an indie book has an amazing cover because there isn't some big publishing house backing it and making sure it gets the best. These indie covers I plan to post are way better than most traditional but I wanted to make two lists so now I can post more. That's why I didn't include them with this. I'm the queen of excuses. So be looking for that later today peeps. :D

My Top Ten Books Read in 2011
My Favorite Cover of 2010